‘Well…’ She squeezed his hand warmly as she smiled at him. Ted’s hackles went down. ‘I guess it’s okay.’ Ted gave a snort of harsh laughter. ‘But maybe I’d be doing you a bigger favour if I refused. Look how they get, once you marry ’em. Changing my mind before I can even decide. Yeah, sit!’ Ted pointed commandingly at the end of the booth bench, and Wizard dropped into it obediently. He leaned his shopping bag carefully against the seat, and smiled with a shy tolerance at Ted’s rough joking.
‘Well, you know how it is, sir. I’ve been thinking it’s about time I took the step. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I want to do this thing while I still got the time to get me some pretty babies like yours and be a daddy to them.’ He spoke with a farm boy’s eloquence.
‘Hell, ain’t never too old for that, long as you find a woman young enough!’ Ted laughed knowingly.
‘Yessir,’ Wizard agreed, but he blushed and looked aside as he did so. Ted took pity on him. Poor sucker couldn’t keep his eyes off the door, let alone make conversation. ‘Eat up, kids. I want to be on the road before the traffic hits, and your mom still has three more places she wants to spend my money.’
‘Oh, Ted!’ the woman protested, giving their visitor a sideways glance to assure him that women were not as bad as Ted painted them. The stranger smiled back at her with his eyes, his mouth scarcely moving. Then his eyes darted back to the door.
Ted pushed his plate away. Leaning back into the booth seat, he lit a cigarette. ‘Finish your lunch, kids,’ he repeated insistently, a trace of annoyance coming into his voice. ‘Clean up those plates.’
The boy looked down at his hamburger in despair. It had been neatly cut into two halves for him. He had managed to eat most of one piece. ‘I’m full, Dad,’ he said softly, as if fearful of being heard. His sister pushed her salad plate aside boldly. ‘Can’t we have dessert before we go?’ she pleaded loudly.
‘No!’ snapped Ted. ‘And you, Timmy, just dig into that food. It cost good money and I want it eaten. Now, not next week!’
‘I can’t!’ Timmy despaired. ‘I’m full! If I eat anymore, I’m gonna throw up.’
Ted’s move was so casual it had to be habit. His right hand, with the cigarette in it, stayed relaxed, but his left became a claw that seized Timmy’s narrow shoulder. It squeezed. ‘If I get that “throw-up” bit one more time, you are going to regret it. I said eat, boy, and I meant it. Clean up that plate, or I’ll clean you up.’
Cold tension rushed up from the children. The little girl made herself smaller. She took a carrot stick in both hands, like a chipmunk, and quickly nibbled it down. She refused to look at her father or brother. The boy Timmy had ceased trying to squirm away from Ted’s white-knuckled grip. He picked up his hamburger half and tried to finish it. His breath caught as he tried to chew, sounding like weeping, but no tears showed on his tight face.
The woman’s face flushed with embarrassment, but Ted was too focused on his dominance to care if he caused a scene. The stranger was oblivious, anyway. His long narrow hand had fallen to the table, where he toyed with the candle in its scarlet holder. He lifted it and swirled it gently, watching the flame gutter and leap as the wax washed around the wick.
‘It’s a very big hamburger for such a small boy.’ The stranger did not speak in his self-effacing country twang. His tone made him an interloper at the table, drew Ted’s eyes to him and refocused his anger. Wizard’s eyes met his. Their stares locked. Wizard’s eyes blazed an unnatural electric blue. Abruptly he switched his gaze to Timmy. Ted’s startled gaze followed his.
Wizard had continued to toy with the candle. The light from his candle faded, then leaped up with a white intensity. It became the only important light in the dimmed restaurant. It licked over the boy’s face, playing games with his features. His round child’s chin jutted into the firm jaw of a young man; his small nose lengthened; the brows on the ridges above his eyes thickened, and deepened the eyes themselves into a man’s angry stare. The anger and hurt in his face were not the emotions of a wilful brat. Ted was looking into the eyes of a young man being forced to act against his own judgement and resenting it keenly. One day he would have to justify himself to that man. His hand dropped limply from his son’s shoulder.
The candle flickered down, but Ted’s vision did not pass. How long since he had last looked at this boy? There had been a baby, like an annoying possession, and then a toddler, like an unruly domestic pet. They were gone. This was a small person. Someday he would have to confront him as an adult. Ted’s jaw gave a single quiver, then stiffened again. Wizard set the candle down on the table.
‘If you’re full, Tim, don’t eat the damn thing. But next time, tell me before I order it for you. It’ll save us both a hell of a lot of trouble.’ Ted leaned forward angrily to grind out his cigarette on the untouched hamburger half. Wizard flinched slightly, but made no remark. The woman was looking from face to face in consternation. A message had passed, a change had been wrought; she knew it, but she also knew she had missed it. She began helping her daughter into her coat. She gave the stranger a long look from the corners of her eyes. He met it full face and nodded to acknowledge her uneasiness. Ted was moving to leave, almost fleeing. She rose and gathered her purse and bags. Nodding to the stranger, she managed, ‘Best of luck to both of you.’
‘And to you, also,’ Wizard replied gravely. He watched them walk to the door, the girl holding her mother’s hand, the boy walking out of his father’s reach. They would need more than his luck wish. He gave a small sigh for them, and turned his attention to more immediate matters. Nina was busy taking orders; the aproned girl had just carried a tub of dirty dishes back to the dishroom. Wizard assembled his lunch.
Only the top of Tim’s hamburger had been fouled. He discarded it and placed the rest on the woman’s plate beside the handful of crisply dark french fries she had rejected. Both the children had been served from the salad bar. Their two plates were a trove of broccoli spears, cauliflower florets, sweet pickles, and garbanzo beans. They had devoured the more prosaic radishes and carrot sticks, but left these adult-bestowed vegetables for him. Ted’s plate donated a wedge of garlic toast, one corner slightly sogged with spaghetti sauce, and two sprigs of parsley. Not a feast, he reflected, but certainly far from famine. And he needed it. The candle business had drained his reserve energies. It hadn’t been wise. If Cassie heard of it, she’d call him a meddler, even as her eyes sparkled with the fun of it.
He ate without haste, but he did not dawdle. He had to remember that he was the man who had arrived late for a lunch date. No reason to rush. In the course of his meal, he refilled his mug four times, feeling with pleasure the hot rush of caffeine that restored him. During his fifth and final cup, he neatly stacked the dishes out of the way. He drew his newspaper from his shopping bag, folded it to the want ads and studied it with no interest. He had possessed the paper for several days now. It was beginning to look a little worn; best replace it today. So essential a prop was not to be neglected.
As he gazed unseeing at the dense black type, he reviewed his morning. The Celestial Seasonings Sampler was the high point today. He had found the box of tea bags in the dumpster in the alley behind the health food store. The corner of the box was crushed, but the tea bags were intact in their brightly coloured envelopes. The same dumpster had yielded four Sweet and Innocent honey candy suckers, smashed, but still in their wrappers. In a dumpster four blocks away, he had found two packets of tall candles, each broken in several places, but still quite useful. An excellent morning. The magic was flowing today, and the light was still before him.
Wizard drained his mug and set it on the table. With a sigh he folded his paper and slipped it once more into his shopping bag. The bag itself was an exceptionally good one, of stout plastic and solid green, except for the slogan, SEATTLE, THE EMERALD CITY. It, too, had come to him just this morning. Rising, he glanced around the place and left his best wishes upon it.
He paused at the pay phone on the way out, to put the receiver to his ear, then hit the coin return and check the chute. Nothing.